Biological Adhesives: from Biology to Biomimetics

Biological adhesives offer impressive performances and the potential to inspire novel, more reliable, efficient and environmentally-friendly adhesives for an increasing variety of applications. Adhesives found in nature perform in ways that man-made products simply cannot match; some are reversible, others work most effectively underwater and many are universal in their performance to substrates of varying composition and structure. However, our knowledgeof natural adhesive systems remains distant from the engineering of innovative adhesives for specific industrial needs. Bio-adhesion research is a field at the border between biology, biophysics, chemistry and materials science, and the complete characterization of a biological adhesive requires a broad range of techniques and expertise. The series of papers presented in this theme issue are based on collaborative efforts aimed at identifying interesting biological adhesives and their functional characterization, and to facilitate the development of synthetic counterparts with improved function.

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